Pocketing Embers

I know it’s hard to believe I’m moving on.
The same me who professed a love without end
and perpetual patience, come what may.

Did I really know love?

You’re right to wonder,
for in its youth that fertile attraction
grew like moss over stone,
unabated by darkness,
and encouraged by slight light.

But I’m the same one,
ready now to pocket those earlier days,
with the bitter and the sweet enshrined,
ready to free this most hopeful part.

For though you couldn’t do it,
someone else might be willing
to commit to enlivening the type of love
that normally covers pages,
readily breathing into it, life.

Can I really do it?

You’re right to wonder,
for so many times I’ve tried and failed.
Always feeling around anxiously, like the blind,
for the way to your heart.

But it’s none other than me.
And having seen your incapacity for change,
I now know that you can never supply
the type of love on which I can lean,
though you lean willy-nilly on my cache.

Won’t I have regrets?

You’re right to wonder,
for but a breath rekindles a dying flame,
thus a concentrated effort on your part
might have me reassessing this notion
that secret desires can be pocketed
and replaced by noble assertion.

But I think it best to leave regrets to you.
The future I’ll take, one day at a time.